Abstract
Ultraviolet/visible photon transmission measurements were applied to study liquid crystal phase transitions in the binary BOPDOB-BOPOOB mixture. A sequence exhibiting a new reentrant, namely isotropic-nematic-smectic A-C-A as temperature is lowered, is identified. For the smectic A-C transition, the critical exponent β is seen to cross over from the mean-field 0.501 ± 0.008 to the helium-like 0.336 ± 0.012 as the transition is approached. The reentrant C-A transition is first-order, signalling a tricritical point in the phase diagram.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 301-308 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Phase Transitions |
| Volume | 75 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2002 |
Funding
We thank Prof. A. Nesrullayev for supplying us with the liquid crystal samples. ANB thanks Prof. C.W. Garland for two decades of useful conversations. The Perkin Elmer Lambda 2 UV/VIS spectrometer was kindly donated by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. This work was supported by the Research Fund of Istanbul Technical University, Grant No. 1426 and 1538. ANB was supported by the US Department of Energy under Grant No. DE-FG02-92ER45473.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| US Department of Energy | DE-FG02-92ER45473 |
| Istanbul Teknik Üniversitesi | 1426, 1538 |
Keywords
- Binary mixture
- Critical exponent
- Crossover
- Photon transmission technique
- Reentrant phase transitions
- Smectic order